Jennifer Fallon - the Official Site

There’s a formula for romantic comedies that one must adhere to, which is disturbingly close to the guidelines Mills and Boon put out for their novels. Understandable too, given the size of the romance market. Your hero must be handsome, a little bit naughty, ultimately redeemable and every woman should want him. The heroine must be likable, a little quirky, and she must win the hero over with the force of her lovable personality, because even though all the people in these stories are inevitably drop dead gorgeous, it’s never about the sex, because, well, that would be just crass…

Music and Lyrics is textbook rom-com stuff, but then it doesn’t try to be anything else. Has been eighties boy-band star, Alex Fletcher (a very affable Hugh Grant), gets a chance for a comeback as a song-writer, if only he can pen a hit song for the “bigger than Britney and Christina put together” hottie, Cora, so she can include it in her next mega-mega-mega hit album. Oh, and he has to do it in four days because Cora wants to open her new show with it, next week.

Enter Sophie Fisher, she of the many hang-ups and emotional turmoils, who arrives to water the plants. Turns out she has a gift for rhyme, because, in the way of all rom-coms, the pot-plant lady just happens to have a graduate degree in creative writing. Naturally. Alex prevails upon Sophie to aid him in his quest for the perfect hit song, during which time they will bond, fall in love, fight, get back together again and live happily ever after.

The script is very witty in places and much funnier than I expected. The sight of Hugh Grant doing his boy-band number in the opening credit is hysterical. Almost as funny is the Pop-Up Video clip at the end, summarising the “happy ever after” we’ve paid our $14.50 to see.

The general likeability of the characters helps get you past the somewhat ludicrous plot, helped enormously by a couple of sitcom veterans in Kristen Johnson (3rd Rock from the Sun) as Sophie’s older sister, and Everybody Loves Raymond’s Brad Garret as Alex’s loyal, long-time manager. Johnson in particular, almost steals the show, her forceful and larger (in all ways) presence making the normally bright Barrymore fade into the background whenever they shared a scene. Fountains of Wayne bassist, Adam Schlesinger’s original music is fairly easy on the ear, and very much the manufactured hit-pop-music the characters are commissioned to produce.

The problems our heroine has to deal with are trite and contrived (Alex cheerfully admits he doesn’t have any). The characters are two-dimensional and the ending should carry a warning for diabetics, it’s so mushily sweet. In spite of this, writer/director Marc Lawrence (Two Weeks Notice, Miss Congeniality 1 & 2) brings us a movie that is a fun way to spend an hour and a half. I’d probably sit through it again, if I had to, and there was nothing better on TV.

The perfect first date movie, nicely timed for Valentine’s Day.